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Industry Ignited Podcast
Industry Ignited is a platform for bold conversations with leaders who are transforming the way business gets done. Each episode spotlights breakthrough stories from the industrial, manufacturing, biotech, chemical, and B2B sectors, giving you an inside look at how top executives, innovators, and changemakers tackle real-world challenges and drive meaningful growth.
Hosted by Dr. Leeanne Aguilar—entrepreneur, executive coach, and marketing strategist—Industry Ignited goes beyond surface-level discussions to uncover the strategies, mindsets, and lessons that fuel leadership at the highest level. From navigating complex operations and scaling companies to rethinking culture and preparing for the future of work, every conversation is designed to inspire, challenge, and equip you with fresh perspectives.
Whether you’re an executive, entrepreneur, or emerging leader, this podcast will spark ideas, expand your vision, and ignite the drive to lead with confidence in today’s evolving business landscape.
Industry Ignited Podcast
How Waste Could Help Solve the World’s Energy Crisis | Ep. 106 [David Goebel]
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What if one of the world’s biggest waste problems could become one of its most valuable energy solutions? In this episode of Industry Ignited, Dr. Leeanne Aguilar sits down with Dave Goebel, CEO and Founder of EnVerde LLC, to explore how waste streams can be transformed into clean energy and valuable chemical resources.
Dave shares his journey from global leadership roles in the oil and chemical industries to building a sustainability technology company focused on waste-to-energy innovation. He explains how catalytic gasification can convert organic waste into syngas and heat, why localized energy systems could play an important role in the future, and why environmental solutions must also make economic sense to achieve widespread adoption. The conversation also dives into scaling clean technology, building strategic partnerships, navigating startup funding, and the resilience entrepreneurs need when they hear “no” far more often than “yes.”
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What if the world's biggest waste problem could become its most valuable energy solution? Welcome to Industry Ignited. I'm Dr. Leanne Aguilar. And today I'm joined by David Gobel, CEO and founder of Enverde, a sustainability technology company transforming waste streams into clean energy and valuable chemical resources. Dave, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Hi, Leanne. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarLet's dive in. So Dave, you've held global leadership roles at ExxonMobil and across the energy and chemical sectors. What led you to pivot into sustainability and launch in Verde?
SPEAKER_01Actually, it's always been something of personal interest to me. I majored in the biological sciences when I was in college and ended up in the oil and chemical sector. So this kind of allows me to be able to combine both interests. I can take that knowledge that I obtained during my school years and apply it to all the things that I learned while I was at ExxonMobil. And I found a number of like-minded people, people that have backgrounds similar to mine, that we can bring all of us together and have the shared value of trying to create sustainability in a world where really it's lacking. And so we hope we can accelerate.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. But I understand when you found it inverted, sustainability wasn't even the dominant term yet. What early signals convinced you that space would define the future of energy?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think just based again on my background, uh, I had done a lot of work in environmental areas with ExxonMobil and really found it to be an area that a lot of people really appreciated, but they were unfamiliar with it. A lot of what goes on, I think, in sustainability is a lack of familiarity. So some of this work that we do is being really advocating for what sustainability is all about educating, answering questions, trying to take away some of the misinformation that exists out there. You're right, sustainability is something that's not well recognized. I was at a conference just a couple of years ago, and someone had just been named the sustainability manager for a very large organization. And I asked the first question, what does sustainability really mean? And even though that was their title, they really had a difficult time explaining it. But today, I think it's pretty straightforward. Sustainability, at least in our vernacular, is taking economic viability and environmental viability and putting them together. You have both that economic and that environmental component.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, no, that's a great, very clear definition. And yeah, thank you for that. Now, you evaluated over 200 technologies before selecting your current pathway. What criteria ultimately guided that decision?
SPEAKER_01It really was that definition of sustainability. We had kind of a checklist. And we wanted to make sure that we found a technology that was going to be both economically and environmentally strong. There's a lot of really cool technologies out there today, but they're not uh they're not economically viable. They're not, at least in the near future, maybe even long term, without some kind of support, some kind of mandate, something like that. We wanted to be able to provide something in the marketplace that we knew economically would be competitive right from the start and kind of go from there. So as we were looking at, we were doing some things internally within our own organization to try to come up with the right technology. But after evaluating 209 technologies, the 210th one just happened to be the right one. We love what it can do. Uh no technology is perfect, but this one really hit all the check marks that we were looking for.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarAll right. So yeah, so you to develop you actually developed a checklist and you had certain criteria for what would make a sustainable company. And tell me about the other leaders, your core leadership. How many of you are there? Or, you know, how did you come together to form this company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there are five of us that work on this full-time. All of us come from the oil and chemical industry in one form or another. I've worked with everyone that's on our team in the past. So I was able to really recruit such an excellent team. Uh, we have several PhDs on the team, certainly uh people with years and years, decades of experience. Uh, all of them, and we're kind of a virtual organization. We are headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our team is spread out everywhere. Our CTO actually is in Rome, Italy. Something that you can do today when you have the internet. But we decided in Minnesota because the University of Minnesota is our technology partner. Uh, we're a spin-off of that organization. So we want to be close to where the origins were, and then of course, in the Midwest and Minnesota in particular, there's a there's a very strong sustainability feeling that the community has, and there's a lot of biomass materials, which is kind of our our key feedstock component for our technology.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. So, what were the biggest lessons in transitioning from corporate leadership into building an early stage clean tech company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it it there's really two different worlds. I appreciate so much the background that I had uh from the corporate environment because I learned a lot around key disciplines in supply chain aspects, manufacturing, quality control, uh marketing sales. So, all those things I've been able to apply, and our team members have been able to apply to what we're doing at Verdi. But being in a startup, uh, the biggest difference is the capital availability. Uh, when I was at ExxonMobil, we knew what the process was in order to get funding for key projects. When you're trying to do something as a startup organization, those funds are coming from outside sources. So the communications, the networking, the work you do in order to obtain those funds is is clearly different. Both challenging in both environments, but I think the step work that you do is completely different. Yeah.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarHuh. So that's interesting. How did you navigate that, those differences then?
SPEAKER_01And we're still learning. You know, I think uh the biggest challenge for us from a funding or financing standpoint has been really just understanding the landscape, what's available out there, what the right path is. And I think we uh after some time, we figured out that with our business plan and model, where we want to take our business, and with what funds are available out there, we've decided, well, there are just certain sectors that we're not going to approach today because it it's just not the right time. But there are other financial sectors that we thought this is really a good match. Uh for instance, social impact funding is certainly something that we're very interested in because we can't have a great deal of impact, not only environmentally, but from an economic development standpoint, we're providing energy in communities that don't have energy today. Because, you know, frankly, we're a new take on waste to energy. Everyone creates waste. So it doesn't matter where you're at in the world, you're going to have organic materials that we can convert with our technology. So now we can provide energy where it doesn't really exist.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, that's awesome. Now, waste management and carbon emissions are global challenges. How does Inverti's approach redefine both as opportunities rather than liabilities?
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, everyone looks at waste as really being a cost and an environmental problem, so do we. And on the carbon management side of things, I think one of the things we don't educate people enough on is the fact that the problem we have within our environment is we have too much carbon inventory. And that's because we continue to introduce more and more inventory from underground by bringing up fossil fuels. And what we've done is we've inundated the environment. The environment has more carbon in it than it can actually handle or metabolize today. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to repurpose carbon that's already in the environment. And one of the best ways to do that is to take waste streams that are normally problematic, both from a cost and an environmental standpoint, unlock the energy that's in that waste, and now use that as a substitute for what normally would be a fossil fuel pathway to provide energy or chemicals. So we're really we're replacing or supplementing what you would normally do with a fossil fuel path. Okay, very interesting.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarNow, your catalytic gasification process converts waste into syngas in a single pass. What makes this fundamentally different from traditional gasification systems?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are a couple of different things. First of all, in the single pass, usually you're going to have to take the gas that you make and clean it up or recirculate it back through your system because it's not 100% sin gas yet. In our particular case, we have a very high conversion percentage. That's one of the real advantages of the technology. And that saves both in an operational cost standpoint and capital cost, because we don't have to do the costly cleanup of the syngases after we try to produce it through the first pass. So if you can make something right the first time, it really saves a lot of expense, and it's it's a lot more efficient to be able to do it that way as well. So that's one of the advantages. But catalytic processing provides a lot of different advantages. We can actually make the technology mobile so we can actually bring it from one location to another. So our assets don't have to be set in concrete or set on the earth somewhere. We can actually put it on trucks and we can move it from one location to another to actually go to where the source of the waste is being created. And that saves in supply chain costs. There's just a number of different advantages, including environmental advantages, and being co-located or as close to the feedstock source as you possibly can get. So those are a couple of different things. The catalytic technology allows us that one time through pass and the mobility.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo for our listeners who are not familiar with what you do, tell us a little bit more about your system, how it works, and your target customers.
SPEAKER_01Well, gasification is not new. It's been around for a couple thousand years, but our technology obviously is quite new. It's an advancement, several step changes, we believe, over anything that's in the marketplace today. So what we do is we have a three-stage process. So the first stage for us is the waste management or waste preparation stage, where we take the waste materials that we're going to put into our system and we prepare them. So if it's, for instance, wood, we'll chip it up so it's easier to be able to move it into our system itself. If it's a liquid, we'll make sure that it's homogeneous. So we may put it through a mixing system or something like that before we introduce it into the reactor itself. So all the different feedstocks may have different ways of preparing them in order to go into that second stage, which is the actual chemical reactor. So we have a reactor that has catalyst in it. We heat it to a very high temperature using our own syngas as the heating fuel. And then we introduce that feedstock. And once that feedstock starts reacting with our catalyst system, it provides the energy for that reaction to continue on its own. It's called an exothermic reaction. That allows that feedstock to really be its own energy source to convert itself into syngas. And in fact, we shed a lot of heat from the process, and we can capture that heat as another product. So there's really two products we make, syngas and heat. And if we capture that heat, we can use it for a lot of thermal applications. And then the third stage is storing the syngas before it's being used. Typically, you store it in tanks, very similar to what you would use for things like propane, natural gas, methane, things like that. So nothing really special with that system at all. But it's really that second, well, first and second stage. The first stage, proper preparation of the feedstock, and then the second stage, making sure that we run that catalytic reactor system correctly.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo you mentioned that your system is also portable.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and the catalytic technology allows us to be able to scale to exactly what it is that our customer demand might be. So instead of the very large footprints, the typical gasification systems have, sometimes you may be familiar with the waste of energy incineration plants that are around that are sometimes as large as a city block. We can really make our technology quite small and portable, and we can put it on trucks and actually truck it or rail it from one location to another. Uh and catalytic technology allows you to do that because of that scaling capability. We don't have to have a one-size-fits-all, but the size will fit what the customer needs are.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. Okay. And you emphasize both environmental performance and economic viability. Why is that dual requirement critical for real world real world adoption?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because at the end of the day, as energized as people may get around environmental causes, if it costs a lot more, it is difficult for them to justify making those changes unless it's mandated somehow. So for us, we want to make sure that we make it an easier decision by making sure that we can be competitive with other options that they have. So for us to be able to reduce someone's waste stream costs, that's that's a savings to them. For us to be able to provide another energy source, perhaps right on site, that they don't have to pay a utility for and they can generate their own energy. You know, that's that's a cost savings to someone. So there's a number of different ways when we talk to people about how they operate their organization, what they're doing in their communities, we can find solutions for them that they're not aware of today simply because they haven't had the opportunity to see what a technology like ours can do for them for providing solutions that they haven't had before.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. And what type of waste streams are most valuable for your system? And how does the portability change the economics of waste-to-energy solutions?
SPEAKER_01I'll start with the portability first. Being able to go to where the waste is created obviously saves a lot, both on the environmental side because we're not shipping things all over, and of course, there's a uh an environmental cost to shipping things. So if we can co-locate with someone and convert right on site, that saves a lot of shipment movements that are going or normally would go on. You know, shipping waste is not necessarily a great economic decision, but converting it on site is. So if we can co-locate with someone, in addition to that, if they can also use our syngas and or our heat right on site, then we've got the best scenario possible, that co-location. As far as feed stocks go, we're open. As long as it's organic, it's a potential candidate for our technology. Organic meaning as long as it's got a carbon componentry to it, which when you think about that's food, that's it's biomass materials, plastics, rubber, uh oils. Uh it's such a wide, you know, uh algae. You can just keep going on and on. Uh our feedstock supply sources are really pretty almost in uh in infinite. We can go just about anywhere in the world, and we're gonna find plenty of waste to be able to manage.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. Now you've moved from lab stage technology to preparing for your first commercial facility. What were the most challenging inflection points in that journey?
SPEAKER_01Well, when you're doing scale-up, uh, and and I think this is a critical point, you can't jump from the lab to commercial uh-sized uh enterprises. And we've seen that and there's lots lots of examples. I won't provide them today, but there's lots of examples out there about organizations that have tried that step. For us, it's incremental growth. You've got to go from one step to the next because in the chemical industry, there are changes. When you get to larger sizes, things start behaving differently. So you've got to take that into account. Fortunately for us, again, in the chemical or in the catalyst uh business, uh, we can predict that a lot more readily than you can some of the other um chemical operations that are out there. Catalytic technology has some math to it and some chemistry to it that we can predict what the outcomes will be. And so we could scale differently, we can build differently. Uh, it's just a uh a more efficient process than jumping from the lab to very large commercial scale.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight, exactly. So you are getting into the commercial space though. Tell me about you know that process and how where you're at right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we're seeking funding right now for our first commercial demonstration facility. We would like to use biomass as our feedstock the uh first time around. And a lot of that is because biomass exists in so many different phases and and formats across the globe. Woody biomass is a is a really good feedstock for us. So we're looking very heavily into that area. We're looking at sites today, uh, but we're actively seeking funding for that first commercial facility.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay, so are you partnering with uh paper mills? Is that what you're you know focusing on?
SPEAKER_01Like, well, paper mills are certainly good partners because they they have um a lot of waste materials. They're a great fit for what our technology does. We're looking at forestry products, we're looking at the agricultural community. Uh, there's a lot of ag waste. Food processing is another area that we're looking heavily into. But initially, uh Woody Biomass is kind of the main direction we're going in for our first commercial demonstration phase. And then after that, we'll probably diversify and add some of those other feedstocks.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay. Now your initial go-to-market strategy focuses on power generation and sustainable aviation fuel. Why those entry points?
SPEAKER_01I think because they're both in great demand today. Uh, on the power generation side, uh, the predictions are by the year 2050, we're gonna need to double at a minimum the amount of power that we can generate globally. And that that number, I just recently saw some people there saying that that's a underestimated figure, is probably gonna be more like triple of where we're at today. And we don't have the resources today to be able to accommodate that. So you have to find new sources of power generation and hopefully clean sources, and that's what we're trying to bring to the table. So that's that's why we're going in the direction we're going in a power generation. On sustainable aviation fuel, it's one of those areas that really has caught on uh and is in good favor with a number of different uh organizations, airlines, airports, communities that the airlines are serving, even the fuel industry are all being very supportive of getting into SAF itself. It's it's a um it's a single enterprise, but it's got a global touch to it, right? Because people are flying to all seven continents today. So there's a uh standardization that you can do with SAF that you can't always do with all the other organic chemicals that are out there. Uh, there's known specifications you have to meet. So everyone kind of knows the targets, everyone knows who the participants are, and now it's it's up to us in this industry to try to put together the partnerships and everything to make those things happen.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. So, how do you approach building those right strategic alliances?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that's one of the two main things I do. I have to uh connect the dots, I have to find these partnerships and everything because our core business is to make high-quality syngas economically and heat, of course. So there's there's a connecting to the dots and what makes all that happen. But then there's a connecting of the dots, okay. Once we make syngas, once we make heat, who needs it? Where is the demand? How do they need it? How do we present it to them? What quantities are they looking for? So there's this whole uh ecosystem that you're trying to develop, and that starts from the feedstock side all the way to the demand user side and everything in between. So we have to have engineering partners, techno, technical partners, feedstock partners, off-take agreement partnerships, communities that support these things, permitting processes. There's a lot of arms and legs. So we put that together. I mean, that's really when you asked earlier about what's the difference between being in a corporate environment or startup environment. When you're in a startup, a lot of these things are new. In a corporate environment, a lot of those things may already exist, or there's people and processes in place. For us, a lot of this stuff is new, so you have to connect all those dots together. So that's that's number one is connecting the dots. And then number two is really how do you execute well? How do you find the funding? Uh, how do you find the right first, the first time environments where you can take what it is that you've put together for your partnerships and execute well?
Dr. Leeanne AguilarAs first adopters, early adopters, right, exactly.
SPEAKER_01The challenge, but but they're out there.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. Now, as demand grows, how do you balance scalability with maintaining cost efficiency and environmental integrity?
SPEAKER_01That is what I think we'll be good at because uh from our corporate backgrounds, those are the things that we did all the time. We built, grew, and we we managed costs. You have to. And because our technology is very scalable, we think that the cost side will even improve over time because we're gonna get some economies of scale by growing the business. So I think in that regard, we feel really, really confident our technology is gonna fit exactly what you were asking. Can you scale it? Yes. Can you make it economic long-term? Yes. Even more economical than we're we're we're at today.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, very exciting prospects.
unknownYeah.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarNow you've you've spoken about a future of localized energy systems. How do you see waste-to-energy technologies reshaping global energy infrastructure?
SPEAKER_01I think overall, my opinion is energy will be local in the future and not global, meaning that you're going to get your supply sources from the things that make the most sense, both from an environmental and economic standpoint. So there are people that will be able to uh take care of their needs using uh hydrotechnology, using water to be able to uh generate electricity. Other people will have access to solar, to wind, geothermal, and kind of keep going down all these channels. And for us, waste is everywhere. So everyone is generating waste. So we really believe we can fit in anywhere. So we don't have necessarily a geographic present preference. We don't have to necessarily be in any one location or any one particular uh geography. We can be everywhere. So for us, our growth opportunities are pretty significant simply because waste is everywhere and the demand for what we can make syngas and heat is very, very high everywhere as well.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. And what role will technologies like yours play in the transition from fossil fuels to more circular, sustainable systems?
SPEAKER_01Well, we think just like I was saying that everything is going to be local in the future, I also think there's gonna be a transition period because you already have an established infrastructure today globally, and that's the fossil fuel industry. It really is highly efficient. I know right now with some of the challenges in costs, right now everyone is feeling a lot of pain because energy is high today. In the future, by having things more local and by having them in ways where you can manage it for what your community needs, we think the availability will be greater, the costs will be less, and people will learn more about what it is that their community is providing. So if you're a coal-based community today, you're gonna need to transition to something else in the future. What's going to take care of that gap? And it's not always that end use technology. So if you think about people that are transitioning, say from a coal community where they're getting their power from coal, and then they're going to go to a new technology in the future. That new technology might not be ready yet, or it might be something that's too expensive today. So there's going to be that transition period where we're going to transition from being fossil fuel based to Whatever your next technology will be. And certainly waste of energy can fill that gap. And waste of energy eventually could even be your final decision as far as what it is you want to do within that community or the organization. So I think for there's a transition period, and then there's the next future state. And I think waste of energy, particularly in Veriti's technology, fits both models. Oftentimes people kind of ignore that transition. That's a key element to what's going on. You can't there could be a lot of dropping of the ball in between. But I think if you can provide that trans transitory uh period of time with something that is a really solid, cost-effective, environmentally friendly technology, that works.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. And people are generally resistant to change. How do you prepare them for what's coming up and transitioning into new types of energy?
SPEAKER_01You know, people need to get confidence in what it is that uh they're going to be working with. So there isn't always that confidence. There's a lot of misinformation out there about clean tech and sustainability. And I would say this, and this is from a person that grew up in the petroleum industry. The petroleum industry has been tremendous in supporting the industrial revolution to where we're at today. And you know, some people say we're, what is it, industry 5.0, I think is where we're at today. So that next phase of trans uh transitioning from where we're at to that next phase is going to be a challenging one. And people are resistant to change. But there are people, uh, visionary people that see the light and and are going to participate. And I think that's one of the things you're seeing, for instance, in the SAF area, you're seeing certain airlines that are adopting the use of SAF. They see the long-term vision, what it can do, how it can help the environment, how it can help their businesses. So I think when you have leadership like that and you can see what happens, I think once you kind of break the ice a little bit on some of these new technologies, people start gaining the confidence that, okay, we're seeing it work in the airline industry, is a perfect one because everyone wants safety in the airline industry. They don't want a fuel that they feel is going to in any way impact their safety issues. And when they start seeing major airlines using SAF, that's going to give a confidence level, okay. Well, now I can start using this for off-the-road transportation, or I can use it for power generation in my community, or I can use it for making organic chemicals that I've traditionally been making other ways. And now you're going to start seeing the momentum. I think there'll be a tipping point eventually. We're not there yet, but I think there'll be a tipping point. And even if you take a look at the amount of sustainable power that's being generated in the US today, for instance, or in Europe, you're you're going to see that that growth has been so much greater than what people realize, depending on what communities you live in. It could be 30 to 50 to even close to 100% of what certain communities are receiving today is coming from sustainable sources. Uh, no one would have guessed that 10 years ago. So there there are changes happening. Sometimes we don't advertise them very well. But I think people are going to get that confidence the more and more they start seeing sustainable technology working and being deployed. And that's why we're trying to be very careful with our incremental step change approach and not trying to uh bite off more than we can. Right. How do you think that will impact the the job market? Well, to me, this is economic development opportunities for a lot of communities because if if energy becomes local, now we're not getting fuel from all across the globe, but we're getting it from communities within reach. So now you're gonna have more transportation, perhaps, that's going on locally. You're gonna have smart city development, you're gonna get smart grids. The United States in particular really needs smart grid uh uh assistance. We've seen what happens when the grid goes down. It affects affects you know millions and millions of people. So being more local and having those controls and then getting hooked into a smart grid system where you've got those backup redundancies, it all makes sense. And in our technology fits well into that, as do a number of other sustainable technologies. We are we're pro-sustainability. We are just you know, inverti only. We see others being major players. There's enough demand for all of us to be able to be participants of what's going on.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. Yeah, and like you said, I mean, the volume and the need for for any energy is only gonna increase. And so we've got to be prepared, and that will take more people, more hands-on decks, and uh just increase opportunity.
SPEAKER_01And Leah, there's there's already a billion people that are without ready access to electricity right now. So you already have demand that exceeds what it is we're supplying. And a lot of those, uh, for instance, African nations are are some of the areas that I can think of right off the top of my head that have these demands. Again, with waste of energy or some of these other technologies, you can provide local sources that don't exist today.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, well, and clean up a lot of the waste that's there in some of these sort of third world world or developing countries, which I know is a main uh big problem, you know, in a lot of parts of the world. It is.
SPEAKER_01They don't have centralized waste management. So being able to deploy something like our technology helps facilitate something like that happening. You know, finding ways to gather the waste, to segregate the waste, then to use the waste to provide power that doesn't exist for them today. It's it's kind of a win-win-win.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, definitely. So, Dave, for entrepreneurs entering clean tech today, what are the most critical capabilities or mindsets they need to succeed?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this one, uh Leon, we could talk about this one for a couple of days, but I would I would tell you this. I think um there's kind of a template out there for what uh entrepreneurs are supposed to do in clean tech and in other industries as well. And I would say that we have found the template to be useful, but not uh always helpful. And what I mean by that is it provides guidelines, but you really need to know what best serves you. And I I would tell people three quick things. One is as quickly as you can, get a minimal viable product in the marketplace. Find a way to pilot or simulate what it is you're doing so people can see, because seeing is believing. Second thing is understand if you're a founder or CEO, you're a risk manager. You've got to find ways to decrease risk for everyone involved, for your own organization, for people that are gonna fund you, but also for the communities you're gonna serve. Uh, it helps get over that hurdle of the early adoption. And then the third thing, you have to not let no stop you from doing the right thing. People are gonna tell you no far more than yes. And this is not something that gets taught in business school, right? People are gonna get in front of a lecture room and say, Well, I'm gonna tell you you're gonna you're gonna hear no a thousand times this week. You know, don't let it bother you. Well, you learn from it. You find out why they are saying no, what is the pattern, and if you know it's the right thing to do, stick with the right thing. Be flexible. Don't don't be uh so stubborn that you you don't change your model. People talk about pivoting all the time. But I think the important thing is it can be pretty discouraging to be an entrepreneur because you do hear the negativity all the time. And fortunately, I work with people that are pretty positive uh people, so that really helps support me. Every time I hear that no, I know that I've got people that are behind me saying, nope, we're gonna we're gonna go that next step. Yeah, we're gonna get to that end game.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, that's great advice. I mean, they they don't teach people how to deal with rejection and to handle no and to persevere, I think, in business school. But that is great insight. I mean, just being I mean, that's resilience. It's being able to keep going, even though others are not taking you seriously or not giving you the answers that you want or just saying no. So, right, good insight. Dave, thank you for joining us. How can listeners learn more about you and Inverdi?
SPEAKER_01Well, you can certainly look us up on the web. We're at Inverdi. It's E-N-V-E-R-D-E-L-C.com. And they can also call us directly. We've got people answering the phones all the time. That's area code 612-567-1166. And we can be contacted either through email on our website or through that phone number. And they should feel free to contact us anytime. We'd love to talk to them.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarAwesome. Well, thank you again. Very insightful. And for our listeners, thank you for tuning in to Industry Ignited. Be sure to subscribe and join us for the next episode. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.